Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

Executive Summary (for busy readers with busy lives): Who’s happy with airport security? Not me. I wrote the Minister of Transportation, and it took his office five months (and repeated pressure) to get a response to my complaint that water, but not explosive batteries are being taken from people boarding planes. The office’s response is that CSIS hasn’t identified batteries as a potential threat to planes, but water bottles and maple syrup are sufficiently dangerous to a point where airport security procedures around the world and in Canada needed to be revamped overnight. If five years of security revamping since September 11, 2001 didn’t fix the system, obviously an overnight fix cannot either.

This story appeared first at The Daily Canuck.

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I got a call from Richard, who works for Minister Cannon at Transport Canada, Tuesday morning. We talked for about 10 minutes how Canada’s airport security functions. This call was a belated response to my letter from last year, and my many, many, follow up letters, including a couple from my Conservative Member of Parliament (the latest being in the last two days before the call). Richard said there was a mix up where my letters hadn’t been entered into the system properly, and to his credit he decided a phone call would be the most efficient response.

My opinion is that airport security isn’t functioning as smoothly as it should be, and even introduces the risk of missing important security incident interventions by focusing too much on minutiae. Why for instance are they requiring passenger screeners to take away our water bottles and toothpaste tubes, when actually explosive lithium ion batteries are allowed on board? Richard says that’s because the government is bowing to pressure from intelligence services who identify liquids and gels as threats, but not energy cells. I say it’s because government is bowing to pressure from the public to “do something about those terrorists we hear about on CNN”, and intelligence services are endorsing the first knee jerk reaction thought of to counter any new threat.

I asked him if lost luggage, where it flies to a city other than where the owner flies to, had become an extinct problem? He suggested Air Canada would be better able to answer that, but I replied that he should know since it’s a transport security issue! If bags are not to be allowed onto planes that fly, while their owner isn’t on board, then misdirected lost bags should not exist unless there’s a security incident! Come on, it’s pretty easy to figure that out.

We’ve all heard about the incidents in Toronto and Calgary where bags were not properly screened because security felt they didn’t have the time [or possibly the training] to do it according to code. Why are we having security seize liquids and gels, when they don’t even have time to scan all of the bags? I think we should focus our resources on detecting threats before they arrive at the airport, through better intelligence. I’ll leave the intelligence experts to come up with ways of doing that which don’t increase our plane boarding times by close to an hour.

We should not be saddling more security staff with more things to check. It’s human nature to go on autopilot when our job gets routine and stressful, and what we absolutely do not need is our human resources in security using auto-pilot when they are on the front line. We need our eyes in security to stay fresh, and flexible to check threats they sense, not just ones they stumble upon through a brute force search of everything possible. The same logic is used in detecting computer virus threats; find suspicious activity, even if you don’t understand the desired outcome of the suspicious object being examined. We could beef up security by employing both brute-force, and heuristic security at our airports, so long as the human factor of trust between security forces is minimized. Otherwise the second security review would be almost pointless, since it’s human nature to trust the findings of a peer as accurate.

-Bennet, as seen on Miss Cellania.

I tried to make it clear to Richard that while I think CSIS and the worlds’ intelligence services are making the best recommendations for security they can think of, they may not be thinking in practical terms like politicians should be. They are thinking about what works in theory, and not what actually happens when these Orwellian security measures become the norm. We can’t allow the government to provide us the most security in theory, because that will eventually lead to every public building having a metal detector (according to the theories this government is operating under). It’s more important to encourage a society’s people to remain peaceful through communication, equality, democratic representation. We need to save our security forces’ time to be used on only the violent trouble makers.

Focusing so much daily attention on bomb prevention, gives society a false sense of reality where bombs are perceived to be more likely to kill you in day to day life than say a drunk driver who is statistically a much larger threat to us all. Intelligence services should be the ones tracking and stopping bombers, not someone making a security guard wage at a public airport. Richard mentioned Israel, and how even though they are laden with security there is still the possibility of “bombs going off anywhere”. I think it’s obvious we want to avoid Israel’s methods of preventing bombings. It’s not easy to determine what’s causing what anymore. Is there a lot of security present in order to prevent bombings, or are there more bombings because too many people are trained to think that’s the best way to affect political change and representation?

Richard says my opinions on Canadian airport screening are among others he’s heard recently, including one lady upset about having trouble selling her jam. Well it’s time the politicians listened to the people, instead of just CSIS and the CIA who have jobs that depend upon there being violent terrorists to detect and stop. Who should we be listening to - crowds of average people using common sense and known psychological principles to predict and explain the failures of airport security, or the organizations that exist not only because there are bad people everywhere to stop, but who also benefit as an organization (in a perverse yet unavoidable way) if everyone is extremely concerned about the terrorists?

Politicians have been giving too wide an ear to intelligence services, and are ignoring their constituents who are negatively affected by the overblown security policies. Homemade jam may not be allowed onto planes, and they can take away our maple syrup bottled water and home canning, but those politicians are going to get canned at home.

I’d love to do this to punks who smash buildings and things that they don’t even own. It’s good the photographer acted when he did, or he may have ended up with a smashed van.

Dubuc, SK Main St.

Yarbo, SK Yield sign near old school.

It surprised me about how little was in Yarbo. Besides the community hall, there aren’t any unique buildings (aside from one beside the train track I suppose).

- Potash mine visible from Yarbo

- Saltcoats downtown, including the historic 1890s stone shed

I saw a deer when I drove into town, and took a short video. I may put it on YouTube later. A car drove the other way down the street and startled it. The scared animal hid in the bush by a fence as best as it could.

Langenburg, SK

When I left the town, making a left turn onto Highway #16 the Yellowhead Trans Canada, I saw a Mountie walking by the side of the road. A second later he held up a radar gun and although I couldn’t see one yet, an SUV was flying into town. He yelled at them, and gestured madly with his free hand a “slow down motion”. I’d just read at lunchtime in the local paper that someone was busted for 5g of pot after being stopped on that highway due to a “traffic violation”. On a poster, I also saw a $500 reward for the recovery of a womens Olympic hockey jersey that was taken out of an Esterhazy arena.

- My Window

What is Harper thinking? Maybe he figured it was politically wise to have a photo opportunity of him “supporting the troops” while the other parties couldn’t produce similar photographic evidence of them honouring Canadian soldiers who fought at Vimy Ridge. That’s just my theory anyway. It seems like a calculating and cold move given that the VE 60th celebrations were attended by more than just the governing Martin Liberals.

Scotian has a roundup of other bloggers fed up with Harper’s exploitation of military imagery for his own benefit. For a person who wanted to put Canadian soldiers into the certified fiasco that is Iraq, Harper has significant shortcomings when it comes to his claims that he’s on the side of soldiers and veterans.

- WWI monument with captured German gun in Saltcoats, SK

I know of several bloggers now who compost at home using worms to speed the process along. Weyburn’s Pilotsworld and a LaRonge blogger have been doing it for a while, and I’m looking to get started when I can get my hands on some worms. I already have the bin and some compost for them.

There are great photos and a method described here.

WHO in their right mind would encourage parents to mutilate the penis of their newborn? The World Health Organization would, that’s who, and they just did. They figure that just because efforts to convince sex partners to use condoms have failed, our best hope at slowing the spread of AIDS is to perform minor cosmetic surgery on every new guy, simply on the theory that he can’t be trained to use prophylactics.

So I drove through Melville listening to an arrogant sounding granny explaining that all of her descendants have been and will be circumcised because that’s just how it’s done in her family. John Gormley was talking on the radio, taking a poll, and the majority of callers were in favour of cutting the foreskin off their kids’ penis, even though the procedure costs ~$1200 ($50 in at least some places), is not covered by health insurance, and carries risks beyond what males face from urinary tract infections due to poor foreskin hygiene.

The facts are that a circumcision doesn’t prevent a male from developing infections from the end of the penis up through to their kidneys. It also doesn’t stop the spread of HIV, it only seems to lessen the transmission rate enough to be statistically significant in reducing the spread. Sexual intercourse is no doubt affected by lacking loose skin on a moving part. Saskatchewan remains a province where more infants are circumcised than anywhere else in Canada (if I remember the radio read fact right).

Is any cut to the spread of AIDS worth permanently disfiguring a boy’s penis? If we were talking about clitoral skin removal, I’m pretty sure people in most Western countries would think the process barbaric. My opinion is that we’re giving circumcised people a false sense of security about protection from HIV, while there are oodles of other risks from unprotected sex, including many other Sexually Transmitted infections which may (or may not) like cut penises better. So don’t get on the WHO bandwagon just yet. If your son really wants to, he’ll commit to the procedure when he’s old enough to decide for himself, and it will be one less thing he can blame on his parents.

-Ukranian Church in Melville, seen while listening to this story on the radio.

-More discussion is here.

As someone who is knowledgeable about the problems caused by air pollution, I find myself grimacing at the all-too-frequent ravings of those who are poorly informed on the topic of climate change. One of my least favourite ravings to encounter is also the most common; that people have to give up making profit from oil, by scaling back the tar sands production in Alberta [and Saskatchewan]. Whether we like it or not, our profits in the oil fields of western Canada come with a cost, payable in the present and future with our health or even our climate.

Woman at Mile 0:

So the gap between the rich and poor is growing in Canada. I am not surprised and I think its likely to grow larger if Harper wins the next election. Tax cuts don’t provide parents with child care, or help students attend university. They don’t provide home care services for the elderly and they certainly don’t provide Canadians with better health care.

We have leaders who aren’t asking the big question about our economy - where’s the fire? What’s the rush? Why is there a big hurry to get as much oil out of the ground now, as we possibly can, at the expense of the workers who don’t even have enough places to live. What’s that going to accomplish besides making oil owners very rich, very quickly?

I think we should be planning our economic growth and curbing an unplanned boom that will result in a bust later. It’s not like the price of oil is going to go down by much, if ever. Even oil companies and oil lobby groups know that our supply will hit a peak in as little as 25 years which is sure to spike the price WAY UP. If you knew your resource was definitely going to get more valuable within your lifetime, wouldn’t you hang onto it for longer, instead of selling it cheaper now?

Our experts are telling us that we’re doing damage to not only the not-so-certain-future, but to ourselves right now as we work.

Oilsands-area hamlet supports whistleblower MD
Physician raised concerns about high cancer rates downstream from oil projects

Experts are being told to shut up and enjoy the oil boom. We aren’t supposed to think about what eventually happens to boom towns, and prepare to prevent that eventual bust?

The problem with our hurried economy isn’t isolated to the oil fields development. It’s in every city where parents complain they don’t have enough time to earn a living wage and look after their children with any time to spare. If the majority of the population isn’t starving, and we’re not fighting a war where we’re throwing all the resources we can muster at it, what in the blazes are we doing working so much that we can’t even raise the next generation as well as we were raised? I think it comes from poor leadership in almost every level of government, and no one is putting their foot down and saying we’ve had enough 40 hour work weeks.

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The Next Agenda has more.

…It’s because he’s so off the wall, he’s sitting on the floor — pouting about how the rich gets picked on.
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{Putting on my sarcastic face…}

These charts have so totally convinced me that I should be poor. I mean look at it, if I were poor I would be living life high on the hog of poverty! I’d barely have to pay taxes (maybe none at all!), and the government would cut me a small cheque so I could maybe pay my rent [or eat] for the month, and I’d like, have to do nothing at all for it. And if I worked at all the government would just want to give me less money so I can’t easily work my way up to being rich again. Why don’t more people become poor and get a tax break?

It almost seems as if the rich (who have a God given right to own more resources than the dirty poor) are paying more for the privilege of owning more than other people. What an odd concept!

Don’t people know that the rich are entitled to their entitlements, and at the same tax rate as lowlife bums who make minimum wage?

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Sadly this is not the first time I’ve offered an alternative view of reality to Captain Capitalism’s, who may still think that it’s mass transit that clogs streets with traffic.